Right from the start, the content was as open as possible, and community ownership was a core principle. As a programmer with limited resources back in 2010, I have every reason to be grateful for Stack Overflow because back then Experts Exchange was paywalled, and most other forums were either language-specific or drowning in spam.
Stack Overflow's strict moderation was a direct response to those forums, where you often had to scroll through pages of noise to find one useful answer. Yes, it eventually became a hall-monitor type of clique obsessed with enforcing rules, but that moderation wasn't useless. People here forgot Googling a programming question and clicking StackOverflow link? We did this for years, imagine the time saved not going through manuals.
Obviously, there's much less reason to use it in the age of AI. But let's show a little gratitude for what it gave us instead of just grumbling about what it became.